In preparation for Ron Decker's talk in September, I purchased a copy of the 1985
reprint of the Knapp-Hall deck to take with me
when I made a second visit to him at the Museum. As I hoped, he
whipped out the original 1929 version. What a difference in the colors
of the two decks!
Gone are the luscious plums and purples replaced, variously, with black,
brown, and
grey. The Hermit was surrounded by a deep purple background that now is
black.
Justice’s once pale lilac robe is now muddy grey. The Angel in
L’Amourax (misspelled - it should be L’Amourex according to Ron) is no longer draped in
diaphanous lavender
and the shadow under her foot is now grass-colored; because of the impact of her new
yellow robe, she actually appears closer to the couple in the newer version of
the
deck.

In the Fool, the sky is no longer lilac, but green, and his coat, once purple,
is now orange red;
however, the Fool appears more attractive now to me. The colors are richer and I
like the color
combination of the clothes better, plus the black wrinkles on his
clothes stand out more,
making the figure more realistic and lifelike.

Justice once had the perfect Victorian color scheme, with the deep rich
purple-red chair.
It is now merely gaudy as the yellow pours through the gold throne.
The Empress’ breasts, because of the new color contrasts, appear larger and more
prominent.

The differences are striking and distinct. An eight year- old boy who came
into the museum
with his father saw the cards colorfully spread out over the table,
so he strode right
over, in his brash young boy way, and demanded to see what we were
looking
at. Without much help from us, he distinguished between the old and the
new quickly,
and pronounced, without our asking, that the old deck was much better.

"There are various reasons for the color changes. The
new printing
process loves yellows and hates purples, and purple and yellow cancel
one another
out and result in black. Blue in the original goes to green in the
newer deck. The originals were probably photographs of the original art and the 1985 cards
are probably
photos of the old cards. The newer inks and their formulas and the
color separation
could all affect the results. Some of the difference is attributable to
the matte card stock
of the old deck; the new deck has shiny hard cards," Ron said.

The size of the cards is amazingly similar; to the naked eye, the only
difference is that
the original deck has square cut and the 1985 deck , rounded corners.
And, as
mentioned, the original is on untreated paper and has a matte finish;
the 1985 deck is
laminated and has a shiny finish.

Ron Decker says the only improvement in the newer version is " the better paper quality which
was used for the new deck." The old card stock had imperfections in it, which show up
in Ron's deck as dark brown spots of varying sizes; in addition, the
cutting of the cards
was uneven - in L’Amourax the image was so off center that the Hebrew
letter was almost clipped off.

The back of the deck is a design in blue and white and contains Egyptian
figures that
were taken from a bronze tablet called the Table of Isis which was
originally located in
Rome and is now perhaps in Turin, Italy. Knapp chose the figures for
the cards; the
table itself is covered with hieroglyphic figures.

“The one with breasts is otherwise male” and is HAPI, the God of the Nile;
"He has a
papyrus plant on his head," said Ron. The other is GEB, the god of the
earth’s
surface. The one smaller image might be Isis, and the pyramid and the
Sphinx appear
below. No one now knows why Knapp picked those figures (Earth and
Water) and not
Air and Fire or others, because the table surface is covered with the
images. Ron says
“Manly Hall’ s writing ridicules Egyptian contact with tarot; was Knapp
getting in his
two cents worth?"

There is no translation of the table top because it is " linguistically
corrupt and means
nothing." It could have been merely a decorative table made by a skilled
Roman artist.
The table has inspired fantasies by tarotists who think it may be an
artifact, but Decker thinks
that is pure fantasy.

At the conference, Decker will not be discussing the artistic merits
of the cards, but
the symbols. Until more recent times, tarot scholars didn’t explore
the symbols.
Crowley wrote out the symbolism and designs for his tarot deck thirty years
before he
actually got the deck completed.

As an example, Ron referred to the similar hats on the Le Bateleur and
La Force, which are
now interpreted to be the infinity symbol; Decker says, "The design on
the card was done long before mathematicians applied the figure eight
design to
symbolize infinity. The hat was actually the design worn at the
time that
particular deck was first designed. If I am right, it
is an example of
people pressing their own theories to fit their own conclusions, rather
than an accurate
observation of the real world at the time the cards were created."

The synchronicity of Ron’s exploration of J. Augustus Knapp is rather
amazing. Decker
became more interested in Knapp while writing The Tarot Mystique. Ron knew that he
would have to
get information from the New York Public Library because they had some rare
books on Knapp. Along with Knapp”s signature on some of the illustrations in the
books were printed notations about Cincinnati, Ohio. He
initiated
correspondence with several people across the country about this.

Then one day, while working at the USPC Museum, a local librarian came
in to ask
some questions about the museum or the company and in conversation, Ron
casually
mentioned the name “Knapp”. “You mean J. Augustus Knapp? One of my
friends is his
granddaughter and she lives six blocks from here in a house he designed
and built and
filled with his art,” the librarian responded.

From Knapp’s granddaughter and from his own research, Ron learned a
great deal
about Knapp.

Knapp was the first artist hired by US Playing Cards! He didn’t work
there for long, but during his short tenure, he designed a calendar to
be used for
promotional purposes.
Although he left
shortly thereafter, the company continued to crib off the original
design for years,
taking details from here and there and using them on other products.

There is also a written record with the company that Knapp designed a
joker of
“General Boone” which Decker believes is Daniel Boone . In one of his first
acts as an employee of US Playing Cards, Ron Decker participated in a mail and phone auction
to purchase
a western theme calendar which the company realized it had originally produced and
wanted for its archives. The auction was a lively affair and Ron Decker
could clearly
hear over the phone line the cowboys “a whoopin’ and a hollerin’ in the
background”.
When he got the calendar and examined it, he realized it was by Knapp and
located an internal company receipt for its payment in 1882.

Other interesting
Knapp facts: he was widowed and remarried in his late 60s or early 70s. He
alienated his first
family, including the granddaughter who told Ron Decker that the second
wife " dressed
like a man and practiced nonscientific medicine." She practiced what was
then called "
aeclectic medicine", which would be close to alternative medicine today,
involving
acupuncture, herbs, and the like.

The Knapps moved to California and it is there that Knapp and Hall met.
Knapp had
done the illustrations for John Uri Lloyd’s book Etidorhpa (“Aphrodite”
spelled
backwards - Ron can’t pronounce it; he laughed and grabbed my pencil and
pad and
spelled it out backwards for my notes). Hall had admired the pictures, and once,
when Knapp’s wife was lecturing on occult anatomy, Hall was in the
audience and met
Knapp that night through Knapp’s wife. Knapp probably illustrated a
couple of dozen
books for Hall and the Society.

Knapp did not live much longer after the deck was completed. His wife
survived him
and had him cremated and his ashes thrown into the Pacific, which
probably alienated
his Cincinnati relations even more. His conservative Cincinnati family
did not follow his
occult beliefs.

Ron Decker was unable to find the original art for the cards. He went
to the
Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles and asked to see the
original art, but
was refused. Ron suspects it is not at the Society and he knows of no
one who knows
where the originals are today. If the Society had the
original art work, Ron believes they
would naturally be proud to display and exhibit it. Their web site has many
examples of Knapp’s other art, which they sell in prints. Ron says it is so ubiquitous that
it is almost clip art.